I wasn’t actually so mad at first. They bought back our smaller cheaper car and we felt very compensated. But for the second car, which was much bigger and more expensive, they only offered a “fix” which they said wouldn’t affect performance (yeah right), and a small amount in restitution. It felt like a slap in the face. In hindsight I would have gone about things differently but let’s just say that I have little to no faith in the way our justice system works anymore due to how we decided to proceed after that, and we will never buy a car from VW ever again.

Meanwhile, we actually replaced those cars with Teslas. And now we feel like we’re kind of back in the same place, having given money to a company that is pretty shit. We try to vote with our wallets as much as possible but there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, after all. It’s just really depressing and disheartening and makes me not want to buy anything anymore.

I’m in the opposite camp. What are the reasons you don’t like Rivian? (I don’t like VW because we had not one, but two vehicles caught up in Dieselgate. They’re dead to me. Which is a shame because I really liked them.)

I (maybe, kinda) miss what Facebook was like in, er, 2008-ish. But then again I was also 25 so maybe I just miss what life was like back then.

Yeah, as I age I definitely wonder what is going to be my “product of the times” prejudice. I try really hard not to be prejudiced but it can be hard. For instance, I really don’t understand poly relationships. But I’m also not going to yuck someone else’s yum, especially when it comes to the rights of someone to do what they want if it isn’t harming anyone else.

For the first two decades of the century, what it meant to be Texan—as explained by the state’s politicians—was largely wrapped up in a feeling of competition with California.

As a Californian, I can’t help but think of that Mad Men meme: “I don’t think about you at all” or some such. Do all Texans really think this way or does this author just have a huge California-shaped chip on his shoulder?

Musk thinks he already did that with the model 3, right? Billionaires have no concept of “affordable” after all.

Yes! This is my dad to a T. Meanwhile, my husband and I (oldish millennials) “cut the cord” fairly early on but more importantly, we actually have the TV off occasionally. That only happens in my parents’ house if my dad isn’t home. When I was a kid, he’d be working in the garage — where he had a TV — but we weren’t allowed to change the channel in the living room because he’d go back and forth and didn’t want to miss anything.

It’s a hard balance, being parents right now. I’m going to make an assumption and guess you mean you see them in public, yeah? The thing is (I say this as a parent of currently 9 and 7 year olds), our society — at least, my society in the US — still feels a bit like it expects children to be “seen and not heard” while in public. If even seen, to be honest. I don’t see it as much here on Lemmy but I saw anti-kid posts on Reddit all the time. I don’t mean childfree; I mean they constantly complained about other people’s kids. Yes, sometimes that can be due to a lack of structured parenting, but kids are also just little socially-inept, impulse-driven creatures who are still figuring the world out. The urge to hand them a magical little device that will occupy them and keep them “seen and not heard” while you are out somewhere is perilously strong.

All that being said: just last week I was sitting to the side at my son’s martial arts class, and next to me was a mom on her phone who had a young girl, maybe 3 or 4, next to her. The girl was squirmy but quiet. I could not help noticing that the mom barely looked up from her phone the whole time. I felt really bad for the girl.